Bleeding America

 

It comes out that the mass shooter at the Allen, TX outlet mall was a man named Mauricio Garcia, who was fascinated with right-wing politics and white supremacy, and wore a "Right Wing Death Squad" badge. So, cue up the right wing defenders of the faith, saying it's unpossible that a Hispanic man is also a white supremacist. Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tarrio and so on and so on aside.  Leave it to normie suburban Republicans to try and defend actual white supremacists by saying they wouldn't allow freaking mestizos in the country club. Why are our racists not more racist?  is quite the realization for the party that accepted Trump and birtherism and wanted Muslin bans and mass deportations. 

Of course, here at this blog, we've been aware of the love some right wingers have for Pinochet. And know very well why Garcia's politics might be swept under the rug. It doesn't fit the narrative that it's always and only mental illness, and Garcia also suffered from that.  

Just today, another incident in TX claimed lives without guns: an SUV rammed into a bus stop claiming eight lives and injuring multiple others. And it is both senseless and fraught with meaning--did someone decide that immigrants were just people who could be killed because it was politically determined to be fine? I mean, don't people plow into crowds and have other people deem it to be fine? They were only illegal aliens, after all. 

Look, I can be hard on Texas, but we have a violence problem throughout this country. Sure, it's a North Texas meteorologist who is on high alert because a six year old with a missing kitten might ***gasp*** ring his doorbell, for which he needs to be strapped and locked and loaded, but also, we just have trigger happy herpderps out here for non-being Texan reasons. 

A man in New York choked a homeless man out because he was loudly complaining about how being homeless and hungry was hard on a subway car.  He used his bare hands to kill a man expressing his freedom of speech about an unendurable breach between himself and normal society, the situation where he was unhoused, had no money, and was ready to get arrested. Again. Because at least a prisoner was a human being. 

Violence against homeless people is increasing. It can be argued that migrants in America are more liable to face violence than to commit it. We have more gun violence because of our lax gun laws, but we also have proportionately more stabbings. What is that all about? 

I think part of the problem in our culture is political--our right wing media, which always tries to make Death Wish style vigilantism hot and current, whether we are talking about George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse. But maybe there is something soulfully wrong with us. I don't mean in the sense of needing more thoughts and prayers, because that's a dirty lie. But in the sense of feeling like your fellow American is another human being, very much like yourself, Even foreign folks are. Just people. Not just soft targets looking to get their organs vaporized by high-speed projectiles. Not just nuisances looking to be choked into submission.

Just people, who go to supermarkets and malls and churches and parks and schools...